


Nine Lessons in Magic

by LadyNighteyes



Category: Radiant Historia
Genre: Gen, Magic Meta, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-18 23:45:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5947819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyNighteyes/pseuds/LadyNighteyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raynie's learned a lot over the years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nine Lessons in Magic

**Author's Note:**

> I've been meaning to write something like this for forever, and I've finally gotten around to it. I mentioned a few of my magic headcanons in my first fic, and since then those bits seem to have spread out and turned into some level of fanon for a bunch of people. Which is pretty weird for me, because I had a lot more magic headcanons than I mentioned in TYF even back when I wrote it, and it's sort of an odd experience to see people taking bits of an idea and taking it in very different directions. Anyway yes, this is 2000+ words of me geeking about my magic headcanons, I hope you enjoy it.

_Breathe. Do you wish to only be able to cast a spell when you are holding your breath? It is easier not to form a bad habit in the first place than to break one._

Raynie had been twelve when a member of her street gang had found out he was a fire mage. Within a few days, he'd found himself a job at a baker's, where they gave him a few coins a week and a spot to sleep on the floor in exchange for keeping the ovens warm. He'd found a cushy number, the rest of the group had agreed- they even gave him the pick of any extra bread they couldn't sell. Raynie had thought, _Hang on, can't_ anyone _learn magic?_

_You need only a small amount of your spirit for this spell. The power comes from around you- what you will need to do is shape it._

It was a working mage in Cygnus who'd taught her, a man with a turban and a carefully-trimmed beard who'd come to the city from a small town devoured by the war and the desert. He'd paid her in lessons for making deliveries and sweeping the floors, and every day at noon he'd stopped work for a few minutes to pray in front of a small shrine in an alcove in the back room. It had two potted flowering cactuses, and between them a small wooden statue of a woman wearing a tiger's skin as a cloak, her eyes sparkling shards of some sort of crystal. Raynie had never asked about it. There were a lot of gods in Cygnus.

_The power will become what you show it how to be. You must make the portion of your spirit in the spell take on the semblance of fire, or of cold, or of lightning, and the rest will follow._

Raynie had never heard the word "mana" before she came to Alistel. There was power within you and power outside you, and they were different and did different things and you needed them both, and that was all she felt she needed to know. Her teacher had tried to explain in more detail, but very little of it had stuck. She could still remember him telling her, as she struggled to light a sliver of wood, about how there is spirit that belongs to your body and spirit that belongs to your soul, and that only that which belongs to your soul is yours to command. "As a plant contains water, but only the dew on its leaves can be drunk," he had said, as if quoting. Raynie, a child of the desert who had long ago learned which cacti could be cut open for drinkable water and who had seen more dew on the undersides of overturned rocks than she ever had on a plant, hadn't quite managed to keep the look of confused incredulity off her face.

_Think of it like music. If you are in tune, the magic will respond. It is hard now because you are like a singer- you can sing all the notes of fire, ice and lightning, but many wrong notes as well. Your friend at the bakery, he has a whistle- whatever he does, it will be close to the note of fire, you see? It is easier for him, but you can do much, much more..._

She'd asked about healing magic once, and been told she'd probably never be able to use it. You needed the knack. She'd tried a few times anyway, out of curiosity, and fancied that once or twice she might have managed to lighten a bruise a little as she laid in her bedroll at night, but that was all- the magic thrashed and fought and twisted like a snake when she tried to shape it, and most of the power escaped unused. She'd asked Marco what it felt like to him not long after they met; he'd shrugged and told her the magic had a mind of its own, and all he had to do was call it up and point it at whatever needed healed the most urgently. The trick was knowing where to aim it, not how to cast it- it wanted to cast itself. (Later in their acquaintance, she'd learn it sometimes went beyond even that; Marco could drink men three times his size under the table without trying because, as he put it, the magic kept trying to sober him up.)

_Keep control, child. A spell is not a bolt fired from a crossbow. It can be steered while in motion, to always hit where you will it._

Raynie's teacher had been openly disdainful of people with a talent for one element or another, and she hadn't really understood why until she joined the mercenary company. On the second day, they'd taken all the recruits who'd said they could do magic to a practice range, and Raynie found herself witnessing some of the worst spellcasting she'd ever seen in her life. Most of them had had no training at all; they just threw a ball of their own unshaped spirit at the target, overloaded with whatever kind of energy came easily to them. Few of them got more than a little better over time, except in terms of their aim. She supposed, from their perspective, it made sense- if you got lightning even when you were sloppy, why bother learning not to be?

(Stocke wasn't the first competent elemental mage she'd met, but the first time she'd seen his spellcasting stuck out in her head anyway. It wasn't that he was perfect at it, because he wasn't- it was that he cut corners in exactly the opposite way from what she'd come to expect. His form was good enough that she was sure he had to have had formal training, but the spell was a near-invisible shimmer in the air until it hit the target with a strike that was as much force as it was flame. It had taken some working out before she realized what he was doing- he didn't bothered to adjust the spell at all, knowing his knack for fire would drive it that direction anyway. It was, she thought, almost elegantly lazy.)

(The princess, on the other hand... well, she _was_ perfect. What else was there to say? Raynie had even seen her cast a true healing spell on one or two occasions, eyes shut tight in concentration as she bent the uncooperative magic to her will. And Raynie still couldn't figure out how those guns worked.)

_When the spell hits, it scatters, you see? Nothing is wasted. Your spirit and the magic you shaped with it go back into the world, and when you rest, what you lost in the spell comes back to you._

Aht's spells spread out like drops of dye in water, a haze of magic that covered part of the ground and tightened around anything that happened to stumble in, crawling up and wrapping around it like clutching vines. Raynie had asked after one particular confusing melee why none of them ever seemed trigger it; Aht had said, as if it were obvious, "You're my friends." However the girl did it, Raynie was sure the spell would be impossible for a human spellcaster- the Satyros were well-known for their unique forms of magic. Besides, Raynie thought as she listened to the clear, sweet notes that she could _hear_ the power in, she didn't think she'd be able to carry a tune well enough.

_Well done, child. But fireballs are not all there is to magic, even if you do still wish a career in the mercenary companies. First, I think, a spell for light without fire..._

Invisibility spells had been one of her mentor's main sources of income, and so Raynie had known to dread them long before they became a part of her curriculum. Whenever he got a request for one, it meant at least a day he'd spend locked in his workshop, not to be disturbed under any circumstances, and when he forgot to soundproof the room as he worked she'd often heard him swearing loudly in several languages at the spell. The process of casting it, it turned out, reminded Raynie of nothing more than trying to build a castle with dry sand, carefully shaping and balancing and hoping desperately that it didn't decide to collapse and force you to start over. And then you had to do it a second time, weaving another spell into the first to create a key that let the owner find the thing. It paid the bills, though- there was always someone who wanted to hide their valuables. She'd gotten used to feeling the faint breath of nearby active spells sometimes as she walked down the street- not enough to locate whatever they hid, but enough to tell that it was there.

All of it had gone through her head when Stocke had taken her hand and she'd felt a prickly, muffling weight like a wool blanket settle over the three of them, and they'd walked straight down a hallway crawling with guards, their footsteps echoing unnaturally loud inside the bubble. There had to be a trick to it, she'd thought at the time, but if there was she still hadn't figured it out. She'd even tried to eavesdrop when he taught the princess, but the conversation might as well have been in another language, full of phrases like "aetherophotic lensing" and "discharge gradient" that both of them seemed to understand but Raynie found incomprehensible. She was glad she hadn't tried to ask Stocke herself- judging from Eruca's expression, he wasn't much of a teacher even if you knew the words.

_Remember that there is always more for you to learn. The more skills you have, the more opportunities they will give you. Yes, even if you stay with the mercenaries as you desire. And if your wishes change in the future, you will be prepared for that, too. Now- try that regeneration spell again._

When things had settled down a little after the Hell Spider attack in Cygnus, Raynie had taken an afternoon to wander the city. The streets were narrower than she remembered, though just as full of dust and sand. More, even- she was sure there used to be more scraggly weeds growing in the less well-trampled areas than there were now. That mana drain the princess seemed so worried about, she supposed. She flipped a coin to a street kid as she passed; he caught it and bolted, perhaps afraid she'd want it back. It took her a while to find the building she was looking for. Even in these few years, some of the landmarks had changed. This one had too, for that matter. The old magic shop storefront was empty- not boarded up, because wood was too valuable a resource in Cygnus to waste like that, but dark and dusty, even the furniture gone, and a shuffled mass of footprints on the floor speaking to its use as a shelter by Cygnus's street people. She'd asked around nearby, but all anyone seemed to know was that he'd left, and not where to or why. Raynie had sighed and moved on. She had other friends to find.

_Farewell, child. I wish you all the best, and may blessings go with you._

The recruits were almost funny to watch. Alistel made more attempt to instruct its soldiers in magic than Granorg or most of the Cygnan mercenary companies did, but their training had been cut short while the war was on. Now that there was peace, they were catching up. Fireballs fizzled out before they reached the targets, lightning bolts went out of control and earthed themselves in the cobblestones, and at least two soldiers had already frozen their feet to the ground.

She walked over to the nearest, a young woman with dark skin and a look of borderline panic on her face as an arc of electricity winked out from between her fingers yet again.

You had to start somewhere, Raynie supposed. With officer-ing as much as anything else.

"Breathe, private. It's easier not to get into the bad habit in the first place than to break it later, you know?"


End file.
